Internet Freedom Hack is a community hackathon that brings technologists and people with a passion for digital rights together to build software that advances the cause of internet freedom. It will run for the third time in Brisbane and Melbourne on the weekend of Aaron Swartz Day, 9th-11th November 2018
We’re organising the next Internet Freedom Hack in partnership with the Australian Privacy Foundation, Blueprint for Free Speech, CryptoParty Melbourne, Digital Rights Watch, Electronic Frontiers Australia, QUT, and ThoughtWorks.

What the Assistance and Access Bill is It allows law enforcement and intelligence agencies in Australia to force organisations and individual technologists to provide access to encrypted data and communications, and punish them with fines or imprisonment if they won’t do it, or if they talk about it.
The bill has been talked about since last year, mainly in the context of politicians trying to redefine “backdoor”. It’s now available and open for consultation.

Today, we’re proud to be a part of a global coalition led by civil society and technology experts who’ve sent a letter asking the government of Australia to abandon plans to introduce legislation that would undermine strong encryption. The letter calls on government officials to become proponents of digital security and work collaboratively to help law enforcement adapt to the digital era.
In July 2017, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull held a press conference to announce that the government was drafting legislation that would compel device manufacturers to assist law enforcement in accessing encrypted information.

Today, we’re proud to support the release of the State of Digital Rights report, which outlines the many ways Australians’ rights are being impacted by the activities of private companies and governments in the online world.
The internet is often touted as the new frontier of freedom of expression, described simultaneously as a wide open plain free from heavy-handed intervention - or a lawless landscape that political leaders struggle to understand and fail to police.

We’re under way at the Internet Freedom Hack and we have several teams and projects in each city. All of these teams are open to new participants, and have plenty to do, so if you couldn’t make it yesterday but are still thinking about turning up today, we’d love to see you!
Brisbane projects under way Infinite Monkeys. Combating fake news by analysing where it came from. Find out the genesis of an idea by finding copy-pasted or very similar wording between different online news articles.